5 tips for organizing your Team

by Celeste Hamilton Dennis on June 30, 2014

We've heard that some Connectors are unsure about how to help get their
Team organized, especially when it's a large group. So we spoke with Connector Rebecca Needler Dinar, founder of Miami, Florida-based The Tribe, a nonprofit that empowers young professional Jewish leaders, to ask for her advice about organizing.

Drawing
on experience leading community-building exercises with everyone from
doctors to techies, and health gurus to real estate entrepreneurs, here
are her five top tips for cultivating good organizational habits:

1. Get early buy-in from lots of people.

Before deciding that, for example, a volunteer speed matching event
would be good to organize in your community, first talk to people
beyond your Team. What influential people do you know in your social
sphere? Who could help or give advice? You could also try more formal
methods such as focus groups, polls, etc. to learn more.

“Being a leader means assessing a community’s needs, and
sometimes, to do that well, you need to let go of your assumptions of
what that is,” Rebecca says.

2. Share responsibility.

Just because you’re reaching out within your Team doesn’t mean
you have to take on all the work. Divvying up tasks not only takes the
burden off you, but gives others some ownership, too. The more people
involved in a decision-making process on all levels, the better.

“The goal really is to make sure everyone has the tools to participate in their own way,” she says.

Google Docs, for example, are a good way to pool information and
collect data so that everyone's activities are transparent to each
other. This will encourage people to report to a collective, not one
Team leader.
3. Be practical about what you’re trying to achieve.

Define your Team goals from the start. But be mindful about
setting goals that are too big to accomplish right now, given
constraints like time, money, etc. It often makes sense to think small
at first.

“I'm a big fan of momentum-building. Everyone feels good about a success, even a small one. Biting off
just enough to chew—even if it's a few hairs short of your full
objective—is often exactly what you need to attract new volunteers
and get things going,” she says.

4. Be self-aware.

“If you want to take on the responsibility of being a resource
for the community, you have to be able to identify what your own
personal perspective brings to the discussion,” Rebecca says.

We
all have passions which motivate our work and life choices. The
trick is to harness those passions. Allow them to be building blocks,
along with others' passions, and deliver something for the greater
good.

5. Seek out strategic partners.

Identify who in your
community who is working on something similar or could be a strategic
partner for your Team. Reaching out to them, especially early on, could
provide you with all sorts of resources.

"The
truth is, you'll find them in places you might not think," Rebecca
says. “The more people you engage in what you are doing, the more people
will be invested in what you’re trying to achieve. And when others get
excited, it's empowering to the Team."

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Connectors, do you have any tips about Team organization that you'd add to this list?